Applications for Seeds 2025 are now closed.

Seeds is a comprehensive program providing emerging and seasoned dancemakers with tools, means and support to create, develop and premiere a new work. It's a twelve-week crash course in self-producing a choreographic work ready for future festival & venue showings. Seeds encompasses subsidized rehearsal space, a $1,000 artist stipend, a unique cohort experience within the professional dance community, and career development workshops including production management and budgeting, peer review sessions, PR & marketing, costume design, and lighting design. The program culminates in a two-evening fully produced performance at Arts Mission Oak Cliff (AMOC) in Oak Cliff, Dallas.

Important Dates:

Performer Open Audition: February 23, 2025, 12-2:30pm. Registration coming soon!

Concert: May 9 & 10, 2025

Meet the Facilitators

(Stage Manager/Production Manager) Broadway: The Last Ship.
Off-Broadway: Elvis People.
Nat't Tour: Hamilton, Wicked.
Regional: Million Dollar Quartet; Mamma Mia! (Casa Manana) Giant, Fly,The Wiz, Public Works Dallas (Dallas Theater Center) Tonight At 8:30, Light Up the Sky, Hedda Gabler (Williamstown); Evita, Dreamgirls, Peter Pan, Hello, Dolly!, The Producers, West Side Story (North Carolina Theatre).
Eric is a graduate of UNC-Greensboro, and currently teaches technical theatre at Fort Worth Country Day in Fort Worth.

Kelsey Oliver, an Austin native, is a freelance choreographer, performer, and artist routinely in scrappy, maximalist, humor-struck collaborations. Trained as a dancer, KO has spent recent years dabbling in costume design and curation, styling for Performa/Dance, UT’s Fall For Dance, Frank Wo/Men Collective, Erica Saucedo, Heloise Gold, The Reverie, and many solo & duet works. She likes durational stuff, absurdist stuff, devised stuff, funny stuff, and stuff that gets soakingly athletic. She also loves her queer family with 5 fur floof children.
Kelsey-Oliver.com | @kelsey___oliver

Neil Foote, a member of the National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame and the C.E. Shuford Hall of Honor at the Mayborn School of Journalism, is an entrepreneur, educator, storyteller, and strategist. He is CEO of Foote Communications LLC, a public-relations, content management and multicultural marketing firm. He also is Executive Director of Frisco Marketing Strategy for the University of North Texas. He has more than 40 years of experience working in various forms of media as a journalist (Miami Herald, Washington Post), sales manager and Internet strategist (Dallas Morning News/Belo Corp.), and public relations professional (Tom Joyner/Reach Media). Foote has worked with a wide range of clients from the business world, entertainment, and nonprofits, including Ascendant Group Branding, LiquidSoul Media, Denny’s, Dale Carnegie Training, Change.org, Tom Joyner and Communities Foundation of Texas.

Caroline Hodge (Lighting Design, she/her) is a Dallas based programmer and designer who is delighted to be returning for her second year as part of the SEEDS project. Favorite credits include Every Brilliant Thing with Dallas Theater Center, The Perspectives Project with Pegasus Contemporary Ballet, Mini Movement Fest and Seeds with Agora Artists, and Young Frankenstein with Circle Theatre (as an Associate Designer). Caroline would like to thank her family and her colleagues for their support. See more of her work at CEHodgeLighting.com.

This program is supported by

about Seeds

Seeds is a comprehensive project providing emerging and seasoned dancemakers with tools, means and support to create, develop and premiere a new, finished work. This is a twelve-week crash course in self producing a choreographic work ready for future festival & venue showings. Seeds encompasses a subsidized rehearsal space, career development consultations, professional mentorship and numerous connections within the dance community, culminating in a two-evening fully produced performance at Arts Mission Oak Cliff (AMOC) in Oak Cliff, Dallas.

The project is free of charge--no application fees, no production fees, and no rental costs will be charged to the applicant/choreographer. The total value of the program is estimated to be at least $3,000/choreographer. Agora Artists also provides a modest budget to remunerate choreographers, dancers and cover production expenses such as costumes, props and travel reimbursements.

The Seeds project encompasses 5 main elements:

Space Grant

Each choreographer receives up to 20 hours of subsidized rehearsal space, administered through Agora Artists’ partnership with the Arts Mission Oak Cliff. Choreographers will be charged $5/hour for space, one-third of AMOC’s rental rate and a significantly lower rate than many area dance studios.
Professional Development & Mentorship

Participants receive advice from working professionals at each workshop and receive hands-on feedback on staging and directing, writing, costumes, lighting, organization, scheduling and finance. Once the rehearsal process starts, participants meet every other Sunday to brainstorm with peers and to share feedback on their works in-progress. Dancers are also invited to brainstorming sessions, enriching the conversation with multiple points of view.
Production Budget

Each choreographer is allotted a modest budget to be used for personal remuneration, pay dancers/performers, purchase costumes, materials, props etc. Each choreographer will receive a project budget of $1,000 to subsidize their total budget. Detailed budgets will be discussed with the participants in the first workshop.
Performance

Seeds culminates in a fully produced two-night performance in the Sanctuary at Arts Mission Oak Cliff complete with full dress rehearsal and tech.
Network Building

The choreographers selected for Seeds are brought into the program as a group and are expected to support each other along this choreographic journey. They meet every other Sunday for workshops, check-ins, and feedback sessions. Additionally, Agora Artists invites local arts leaders to the concert in hopes choreographers may build relationships with local presenters and arts leaders for future professional opportunities.